Graphic artists have a number of well-known tools for use in the generation of content. QuarkXPress™, Adobe® InDesign® and Adobe® PageMaker® all provide the author with tools to facilitate the generation of content for use in documents. However, authors face difficulty in that the output—such as PDF and Adobe® PostScript®—produced by many authoring programs is inefficient in circumstances requiring the output of large numbers of different documents.
PPML (personalized print markup language) is an XML-based language for variable-data printing. Accordingly, PPML is useful when printing large numbers of different documents, e.g. large numbers of custom-printed advertisements. Conventionally, PPML is used when printing to very fast high-end printers, such as digital presses (e.g. the HP Indigo Digital Press 1000), since the rapid speed with which such printers operate does not allow for each job to be individually transmitted and processed, such as where the jobs are transmitted in an Adobe® Acrobat® PDF (portable document format) file format.
However, the generation of PPML documents and PPML templates is a complex process. The graphic artist, who may chose from among a number of content-authoring programs with which to generate the content, is faced with the difficult task of generating PPML templates (PPMLT) in order to actually use that content when sending variable data print jobs to high-end printers. In many applications, a text-editor, such as notepad, may be used to create the PPML template. The editing process may require a number of iterations to result in the desired document.
Therefore, it can be seen that while PPML offers substantial advantages for variable data printing, currently available tools inadequately perform the task of generating PPML templates. Accordingly, an apparatus utilizing a faster method of PPML template generation would be useful.